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Are you looking for your next (or even first) design client? It’s so easy to get overwhelmed with all of the options out there for generating clients, which is why I believe it’s important to find them in a way that works for you! In today’s episode, I’m sharing a few tips on how to find your next design client while serving your business and your lifestyle!
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Practical Tips To Find Your Next Design Client
If you’re a graphic, brand, and web designer in a season where you are intentionally considering how you want to go after your next client, here are a few practical tips and methods to finding them! I actually share these exact tips with my own students inside of The Brand Strategy School!
This particular training is taken from a live training I did inside of my free Facebook Community!
1: Pick How You Want to Connect With People – Get Scrappy In Your Marketing
The first thing you want to do is get creative; be inventive about how you’re gonna go out and get in front of your ideal clients. This is where I like to say get scrappy. What do you need to do and where do you need to show up in order to get that next or that very first design client?
For a lot of us as designers, that means getting a little bit creative by going to our online communities and networks, posting on your LinkedIn account, your personal Facebook page, or whatever social channels you use and letting people know that you’re available for work. Tell everyone in your network—there is nothing wrong with sharing with those people. Chances are, those communities are cheering for you and want to see you succeed!
Be vocal in what you’re doing! If posting publicly doesn’t fit your comfort level, reach out individually through email or text message or phone calls.
PS – Friends and family members want to support you, and they can do that by paying full price.
2: Pick Where You Want to Generate Leads – Research Your Audience for Lead Generation Sources
While word of mouth referrals are wonderful, you can quickly exhaust your network! You can also find clients through other lead generation sources like Google, social media, and more! Before you start copying what other designers are doing online, talk to your ideal audience and find out where they’re spending their time. Are they on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc? Where are they hanging out online?
One you’ve figured out where your ideal client is, you can commit to one or two of those platforms and build a strategy that works for your brand. My recommendation is to select two, then create content that speaks to your ideal clients pain points while showcasing what your work could offer them. This decision making will help you build a marketing strategy that works for you!
3. Commit to Being Visible
Your business can’t help people if it’s a best kept secret. You need to make your business visible by showing up in a consistent and regular fashion that works for you. Consistency does not mean showing up every single day—it can be when you have the time and energy!
Lead generation does not have to be complicated! Decide how you want to connect, where you want to show up, and how you want to commit to being visible!
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Review the Transcript:
Hi, friend, and welcome to the Brand Strategy Podcast, a show created to equip you with the inspiration, encouragement, and clarity you need to build a brand of your dreams. I’m your host, Bonnie Bakhtiari, brand designer, strategist, and founder of the Illume Retreat from sustainable Strategy to heartfelt Encouragement. Each episode is designed to equip you with the tools you need to chase after your dreams because you deserve a brand that empowers you to do what you love, connects with your dream clients, and offers a deep sense of fulfillment along the way. So grab a cup of coffee and join me on this journey, won’t you?
Hey, friend. Welcome back to the Brand Strategy Podcast, where today we are talking about practical tips to use to find your next, or maybe your first design client. This episode is especially for my fellow graphic brand and web designers, any freelancers or agency owners out there who are in a season where you are intentionally considering how you want to go after your next client. And like I said, maybe you are just getting started and so you’re focused on pursuing your first client. These are methods and and approaches that I have used myself over the years and that I’ve actually shared with the incredible designers inside my signature program for designers, the brand strategy school. And today’s episode is actually taken from a live training that I have shared in the past inside my free Facebook group for designers, so that you can take a little listen and kind of peek in on some of the action based training and content that gets shared in that space.
Honestly, I’m excited to share this with you and kind of pull back the curtain a little bit on this lesson because finding clients is, I mean, that’s like the, the pivotal part of running a service-based business. And as designers, you know, our businesses and our opportunity to create incredible brands or build beautiful websites or to create any kind of graphic design work that hinges on our ability to work with clients that we enjoy working with and who respect our processes and are excited to work with us too. And sometimes those clients don’t just magically fall into our laps, right? Sometimes we have to employ different methods of marketing and networking and putting ourselves out there so that we can intentionally connect with those clients. So whether you find yourself in a slower season or you are strategically planning ahead in order to continue to capitalize on the number of inquiries you’re currently receiving, then take a listen to today’s episode because I’m confident
That it’ll give you some great ideas to explore. Hello friends. Welcome to this month’s live, where we are talking about how to find your first or your next design client. I am so grateful that you are a part of this incredible community created specifically for graphic brand and web designers who want to generate kin income without the hustle, the, or the burnout, essentially. So with that being said, if we have not met before, then let me take a quick minute to introduce myself. My name is Bonnie and I am a coach for designers just like you. I’m on a mission to show you how you can break up with the feaster famine cycle for good in your design business so that you can reclaim your time, your energy, and your creativity. And with that being said, knowing that over the decade that I’ve been in this industry, how many designers struggle, and if I’m being honest, how during different seasons, I’ve also struggled with generating consistent clients.
So the point of today’s quick action packed training is to show you how you can begin to take intentional, decisive action to find your next design client so that you can generate the income that you want whenever you want. So if you’re tuning in live, be sure to pop into the comments, say, Hey, let me know where you’re tuning in from. One of my favorite things about this group is we have over 2000 designers from literally all over the world. So this is an incredibly, incredibly diverse and dynamic group of people, and I’m honored that you are a part of it. So let’s dive on into today’s conversation around how you can go after your next design client, even if you’re just getting started, like I was saying, uh, a minute ago, one of the things that I’ve seen over the 10 years that I’ve been in this industry is just how much designers, especially newer designers or freelance designers, actually struggle with this concept of generating consistent clients.
And what I have seen, and this might resonate with you or it might not, but from my perspective, what I see, and through conversations I’ve had over the years with my students inside my signature program for designers or my past coaching clients, is that we believe that generating client inquiries, that getting the attention of our ideal client has to be this really complicated process. We believe that it needs to be this multi-step experience where we’re consistently going through this elaborate process of creating content for say, social media, and then we’re posting, and then we’re spending a certain amount of time on that social platform engaging. And we do all of this. We rinse and repeat week after week or month after month. And yet we’re not quite seeing the traction. We’re not seeing our inbox fill to the brim with incredible emails and inquiries from people who are clamoring to work with us.
Instead, we might see a trickle of inquiries, but most of the time we don’t see the volume that we’re looking for. And what I wanna share is that if we can actually change our relationship with lead generation, which getting a new design client in your business, that’s exactly what lead generation is. If we can change our relationship with it and we switch from something that feels complex and scary and complicated and stressful to something that feels, hmm, maybe full of curiosity, maybe full of possibility, something that could be fun, something that we could approach kind of like an experiment and we could play and we could do a little bit more of this or a little bit more of that, or just kind of play around with our options, right? How different could it feel to experiment with lead generation? And I will say to that point in the years that you will be in business, lead generation will evolve.
It will be quite like an experiment. And you will be kind of like this incredible scientist behind the scenes who’s, um, in their lab working on different solutions or formulas that will help you experience the results that you want. And the 10 years that I have been in this industry, I’ve definitely had to tweak things and evolve not only as the industry has changed, but also as I have grown, as I have changed. You know, who I was 10 years ago had more energy to be creating more content, or to be more aggressively marketing my business than the me that I am today. And if that resonates with you in any way, shape, or form, I just want you to know that you’re definitely not alone in that. So with that being said, let’s start to get into some of the more nitty gritty of what it actually takes to find your next design client.
And my intention with this is no matter what season of business you’re in, so whether you are just getting started, so you’re searching for your very first client, or you’ve been in business for quite a few years at this point and you’re looking for your next client, or maybe you are resonating with that, that story that I shared, that kind of picture that I painted a minute ago about how lead generation is not really something you enjoy and it’s something that feels complex and stressful and you’re wanting to look at ways to streamline things. Well, this is what this is all about. So first and foremost, when you’re going out and you’re looking for your next design client, I will say that this can work for you if you do not already have a wait list in place where you’ve got, you know, a handful of names, a handful of folks who’ve kind of virtually raised their hand and said, when your next availability opens up, get in touch with me.
I wanna work with you. Right? A lot of us, we don’t quite have that kind of wait list built up yet, especially if you’re a newer business. So what we wanna do is we wanna get creative in searching for our ideal clients, because in the beginning, I think it’s easy for us at least. I know that when I first launched my design business back in 2012, I naively thought that like, if I just launch the website and I, you know, like claim the social media channels and I say, Hey, I’m here and this is what I do, I was gonna get all these inquiries, right? Just kind of like flooding in. But that’s not how it works, because if you’re new, people might not know about you yet. In fact, they probably don’t. So what we wanna do is we wanna build awareness around your business.
And this applies even if you are an established business owner, an established designer, and you’re wanting to maybe dip your toe into the pool of a new design aesthetic, or you’re wanting to niche down or maybe market yourself to a new audience altogether. So this can apply for you in multiple seasons of your business, not just those early days. So we want to get creative, we want to be inventive about how we’re gonna go out and how we’re going to get in front of our ideal clients. And this is where I like to say get scrappy. What I mean by that is what do you need to do and where do you need to show up in order to get that next or that very first design client? For a lot of us as designers, that means getting a little bit creative and going to our communities, going to our networks, posting on your LinkedIn account, posting on your personal Facebook page, posting on whatever social channels you use and letting people know.
And yes, I’m saying tell your friends, tell your family, tell the people that you went to to high school with, tell the people that you went to U University with, if you went, um, tell people from past careers that you’ve had or jobs that you’ve experienced, there’s nothing wrong. And using those relationships and sharing the information of, I’ve started this design business, I’m looking for clients, do you know of anyone who could use my services? And you would be amazed, first of all, your community, your network of people, they, chances are they care about you, they will be excited for you and they want to support you when you’re just starting out. There is nothing wrong. And working with family, friends, working with, you know, friends from high school, working with even like family members. I will say if you’re working with family, charge them your actual rate.
We’re growing a business here. We don’t wanna undercut our services or discount things so that we’re not actually generating a profit. So friends, family, the beautiful thing about that is they wanna support you and friends and family members support business owners by paying the full price. I’ll say that again. Friends and family members support business owners by paying the full price. If they come looking for our discount, no, we’re not doing that. We point them towards what the actual full regular price is. So with that being said, you have this amazing access already at your fingertips to a group of people who will happily say your name in rooms that you might not be in yet, or they might share your information in a conversation that could generate an amazing inquiry for you. So what do we wanna do? We want to be incredibly vocal about what we’re doing, this business that we have and how people can work with us.
If posting it about your business on, uh, LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, look at reaching out and personally connecting with people. That could be through a conversation, through FaceTime, through email, you know, however you wanna go about doing it. If you want it to be more one-to-one, you can reach out to people and say, I’ve started this business, this is what I do, this is who I serve as my I G E L client. Do you know of anyone for me? If so, I would be incredibly grateful for an introduction. And that’s how we start to plant the seeds. And what I love about this, and honestly 10 years in, I still do a variation of this. I still reach out to my community and my professional network and I say, every now and then, Hey, do you know of anyone?
Because those word of mouth referrals are so incredibly valuable to me. And some of my best projects have come from word of mouth referrals. But thinking about how you want to do this long term, first we reach out and we utilize the assets that are already at your fingertips, then we think about, alright, how do we want to get a little bit more creative with this? And so then we look at other lead generation sources. Now going to your community, that in and of itself, those word of mouth opportunities, that is its own lead generation process. That’s its own channel. But of course we see a ton of other designers out here and, um, other online business owners utilizing social media, um, starting YouTube channels, podcasts, you know, doing, gosh, like we could just go on and on and on. But the point is, when you are focused on getting your first or your next design client, it does not matter what your competition is doing.
Instead, it matters where your ideal clients are spending time online. So if you see this designer that you really look up to marketing their butts off on TikTok, and you think, wow, they look like they’re just doing this incredible job, they must be flooded with attention and inquiries. I think that I should be creating TikTok and I like on TikTok, and I should be creating content that is gonna be like theirs. But what I see a lot of designers falling into is they get a little bit distracted by what their competition is doing, and they, they forget that that competitor, their ideal audience might be different from who you wanna be reaching. So if you’re spending a lot of time and energy creating content on TikTok, but your ideal client isn’t on TikTok, then you’re not actually generating interest that will serve your goals in this specific season.
So what I recommend doing is actually doing research, actually speaking to real living, breathing human beings who are a part of your ideal client community. They fall into that group of individuals, and I say, ask them when they’re spending time online, where do they like to hang out? Where are their, where are they spending time on their favorite social platforms? What are those, you know, favorite platforms? What kind of searches are they searching for when they’re looking to hire a professional for their business? So that then gives you insight into not only what sorts of keywords they might be looking for, but it also gives you insight into what specific platforms they’re utilizing so that you can look at that list and you can say, alright, my ideal client is spending time on, on TikTok, on Instagram and on Pinterest. I like two out of those three.
So I’m gonna commit to creating content for Instagram, let’s say, and I’m gonna repurpose that content and cross pin it on Pinterest so my content has a longer reach and it’s working harder for me. It’s kind of doing double time, right? So with that being said, all we’re doing is we’re making decisions about where you want to invest your time and energy and your lead generation sources. And actually here in this group, I think it was the end of last year, it was a couple months ago, I did a, a live all about how to figure out your short term and your long term lead generation sources. It’s a training called, um, how to generate consistent clients. So I highly recommend going back and checking that out. If you have not yet, there’s lots of nuggets in there that will help you get started with this process.
So once you’ve figured out what lead generation sources, and I recommend focusing on two, so if you are reaching out to your community, your family, friends, your past colleagues, that’s one. So you just need one other, it’s super simple. We don’t wanna exhaust you in this process of generating, uh, client inquiries by creating all this marketing content that by the time you actually get the inquiry and book the client, you’re exhausted and you have no more energy to actually design for them. So we focus on strategically generating leads using two methods that will work for you. And then from there we create content that speaks to your ideal client’s pain points and showcases the transformation that your work offers. So what I mean by that is people research shows us that people are more likely to invest in a service or buy a product that will take them away from pain.
So we want to create a very clear picture of, as a designer, if you work with business owners and you notice that if your clients don’t hire you, they’re gonna miss out on sales, are they gonna experience a lack of confidence and they’re gonna be experiencing a lot of imposter syndrome because their brand isn’t professionally designed or whatever pain points you see your ideal clients experiencing, right? That is incredibly valuable information that you can utilize in your content marketing to create posts or videos or, uh, podcast episodes or, you know, long form content that speaks to those specific pain points and makes it clear, Hey, as a designer, I see you wrestling with this. I have created a design process that helps you eliminate that and allows you to experience your desired transformation. What we’re doing there is we are making it very clear that when clients hire us, we take them on a journey from the land of pain points to the land of transformation, where life in business is wonderful, where they’re not experiencing whatever that pesky pain point was, and they are able to experience the growth that they are wanting to and what takes them from point A to point B, your design services.
So your design services becomes this bridge that takes them from struggle to transformation. And people will invest wild amounts of money for a solution that takes them from where they’re struggling to where they want to go and where the struggle does not exist anymore. So from there, you have the opportunity to create content and play around with the kind of content you’re creating. It can be examples of past work if you’re just getting started, it can be passion projects, right? That you’ve, that you’ve utilized, it can be work that you’ve done for yourself. Because don’t forget, you are your very first client. And so success that you have experienced and created for yourself absolutely can be a results that you share to get future clients and, and new clients. So with that being said, what we’ve done at this point, we have figured out where we want to connect with people.
We figured out where we want to generate leads. We’ve figured out, all right, we’re gonna create content that speaks to my ideal client’s pain points and paints a clear picture of the transformation that my services offer. And then the third step is we want to commit to being visible. Your business, whether it’s brand new or it’s been around for several years, your business can’t help people. You can’t serve your ideal clients and guide them through your design process so that they can experience that transformation. If your design business is a best kept secret, right? Like that’s not what we wanna be. We want to be visible, we want to be easily discoverable so that your ideal clients can find you when they need you and hire you, because after all, this is a business. So when I say commit to being visible, I mean commit to showing up in a regular fashion that works for you.
I think that what I’ve seen a lot over the years, being an online business owner, being a coach and educator, and a high ticket service provider, I’ve seen so many experts, they’re very well-meaning honestly, but I’ve seen so many experts tell us that, um, you know, we need to create contents consistently. We need to show up online consistently, and they make us think that consistency looks like showing up every single day. And I don’t know about you, but for me, that is not sustainable. I literally do not have the energy. I don’t have the stamina to show up every single day and talk about my business. But what I do have the energy for is I can show up a couple times a week. I can show up several times a month, right? I believe that consistency does not have to look like showing up daily.
It can look like showing up three times a week, two times a week. It can look like showing up when you have the time and the energy because let’s be honest, our lives demand so much of us. And you might be growing this business while raising tiny humans. You might be growing this business while caring for a family member or an a friend. You might be growing this business while still working a nine to five. There’s so many different things that you could be experiencing that, um, are requiring your time and your presence elsewhere. And so I don’t believe that it’s realistic advice for me to sit here and tell you that in order to get your next design client, you have to post on TikTok every single day. If that sounds fun to you, if you want to do that, if you can do that, please do that.
And I hope you have the most success with it. But for a lot of us, that is not realistic and that is perfectly okay. So instead, when we commit to being visible, we commit to being visible in a way that serves us, that honors our time, and that honors our energy. So whether that is figuring out I’m gonna post three times a week, or I’m gonna show up, you know, two times a week or five times a week, whatever that looks like, you get to decide. The, the point is that you commit to showing up and you commit to showing up at a frequency that works for you. So friend, to recap real quick, this is not an incredibly complicated process, which is why I love saying that lead generation does not have to be complicated. It’s a matter of choosing where you wanna show up.
It’s a matter of sharing content that resonates with your ideal client, that shows them that you can solve the pain point they’re experiencing, and your service is the solution. And 0.3 that you are committing to being visible. Joanna says, yes, I’m realizing that spending more time creating Instagram content more than I want to so I can post every other day is exhausting. I feel that Joanna, it is, it’s just not working for me. , for those of y’all who might follow me on Instagram, you might see me, we probably don’t because I’m not spending a ton of time on that platform anymore. And it’s simply because my season of life does not allow me to have the excess energy and mental space and creativity to show up in on that platform, which is okay because Instagram is not my primary lead generation source. Uh, one of the reasons why I talk about going to your community and building relationships with actual people.
So that works because I have seen that not only work in my business over 10 years, but I’ve also seen that work so, so well in the businesses of my incredible, uh, designers inside my signature program, the brand strategy school. So with that being said, I hope that you’re walking away with more insight into what it actually takes to generate the interest from that, that next design client who’s gonna connect with you and hire you and be so excited to work with you. And I also hope that you’re getting some clarity around what sustainable lead generation does not entail. And like Joanna was saying, it’s not showing up on a social platform at a rate that feels exhausting for you. It’s about looking at the longevity of this. We do not want to be these, these brilliant stars that burn so brightly, but burn out quickly.
We want to be these brilliant forces of energy that burn consistently for long spans of time, for as long as you want, so that your business can serve you and your short-term and your long-term goals. Well, so friend, I hope that you’re feeling encouraged. I hope that you’ve got a lot of ideas to go work on after we wrap this up. If you want to learn more about working together, I know I’ve mentioned a couple times my program for designers, the brand strategy school. It is a community of graphic brand and web designers who are learning how to use brand strategy, my signature brand strategy process, in fact, to reach consistently profitable months to the tune of 10 k and beyond without the trial and error, without the hustle or the directionless burnout. So I would encourage you, if that is something that, that piques your curiosity, I’d encourage you to head on over to my website to learn a little bit more about that, that program, and about joining us or if you have questions about it. And of course, you’re welcome to post here. Um, I, I will post the link, uh, in the comments so that you can head on over and check it out. And I cannot wait to hang out with y’all again next time. So, uh, we usually do these lives every month here in the group, and I already can’t wait for us to dive deeper into another topic around growing your design business with intention so soon.
Thank you so much for joining me today, friend. Before you go, I would be so grateful to receive your feedback on the Brand Strategy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or the podcast in general has helped you grow your brand, I’d really appreciate it if you left us a review in iTunes. Your positive reviews enable the brand strategy podcast to continue to grow and reach like-minded creatives just like you. Thank you for all your support and encouragement as together we pursue building brands with purpose and intention. Until next time, I’m cheer you on from Waco.
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